"How'd you pay for it?" blurted Terry. "Did you have the money with you?"
"Yes. Our outfit had put in $200 apiece, for the trip across the plains, and we'd spent only half, and I carried that because I was treasurer. I paid for the stage ride from the station, though; but in Denver I worked at the hotel—and—and I nursed a gambler who was sick, and when he found out that I'd studied medicine he said I'd saved his life and he gave me $250 as a doctor's fee. But I'm not a regular doctor yet. Now you fellows are to come and work the mine. It's named the Golden Prize, and it'syours!"
Harry stopped short. Terry scarcely could believe his ears.
"What?" challenged Harry.
"Aw, get out!" scoffed Terry.
"But it is," insisted Archie. "I've been just praying that you'd come along. I didn't really save that gambler's life, though he was right sick. But you saved mine; and if he thought what I did was worth $250, I reckon what you did was worth three or four times that because you risked your lives, too. And anyway, I can't stay. It's too high for me up here. I lose my breath. I feel a heap better down on the plains, and I guess I'll go back home for a spell. If I don't give the mine to you somebody'll jump it. There isn't anybody up here I can trust."
"But, great Cæsar!" expostulated Harry. "We'll work it, if you want us to, while you're gone. We won't accept it forever, though."
"I should say not!" affirmed Terry. "We can find our own claim."
"No, you can't. The trained miners are the ones who find the best ground, and you're not trained. All right: you can work it just as if it were your own, and you can have all you find till I come back."
"Cracky, but that will make us rich, won't it?" cried Terry.
"Of course it will. I've taken $80 in four days and I tell you I've just dug a little bit. It tires me all out to dig; and the water's so far. But you fellows can put in a sluice—I'll lend you enough dust to buy boards with, if you haven't enough——"
"We've got a little, and if we haven't enough we'll dig out more," declared Harry, quickly.
"And with a sluice running you can justpileup the yellow!"
"Whoop-ee!" cheered Terry, wildly. "We're rich at last."
The Golden Prize property appeared to be a very snug proposition. It was located about a mile up Gregory Gulch, and right in the midst of things. There was a good enough dug-out, set partly into the slope at the bottom of one of the rocky hills in the gulch, with log walls surrounding the single room and a sod roof. It contained a rusty stove (better than a fireplace) and a bunk and a slab table and a slab stool, all on a dirt floor. The cooking utensils were hung on the wall. The door, of split logs, like puncheons, swung by leather hinges and fastened with a wooden pin and latch-string.
But the mine of course was the most important. That was really the first thing to be inspected. Archie showed it rather proudly, although it did not look very imposing, being only a deep trench into the hillside just beyond the cabin.
Down the shallow side draw that helped to form the hill ran a small stream of muddy water, which finally joined the main drainage stream, below.
"You see," said Archie, "I have to carry all my dirt to that stream so as to wash for the gold, and, gee! but it's hard work. About breaks my back. The digging and the climbing up and down are too much for me. A fellow ought to lead the water nearer, some way."
"Why didn't you?" asked Terry.
"I did think of digging a ditch, but that's an awful job, and I'd have to squat with a gold-pan just the same. I suppose if I'd stayed here I'd have built a sluice or hired one built. I couldn't build it myself, because the boards are too heavy to handle. And anyway, I want to go out. I can't breathe up here. I don't feel as good as when I came in, and mostly I just sit and puff. I felt lots better down on the plains. If I can't work the mine, what's the use in having it? But I'd a heap rather give it to you fellows than sell it to strangers."
"We won't take it, but we'll work it for you, on shares," again asserted Harry.
Archie stubbornly shook his head—and his thin cheeks were crimson.
"Nope. You can share together but you can't share with me. You work it and keep all you find; I owe it to you. I'm so tickled I can hardly see."
"Where do we begin?" cried Terry, excited. "Which is the best spot, Archie?"
"I'll show you in the morning. I'll show you everything," panted Archie, "before I go. We'll wash out some color, anyway."
"We'd better get our stuff unpacked before dark, Terry," reminded Harry. "The mine will keep. We know it's there. Whew, but this is a big stroke of luck. Doesn't seem as though we'd earned it."
Dusk settled early in the gulch, and by the time they had stowed their stuff away, and Jenny had been turned out to browse among the rocks and pines on the hillside, most of the camps in the gulch had ceased their work of the day and had changed to the work of the evening. Smoke was welling from chimneys and from open fires, far and near; wood was being chopped and men and women were cooking. The gulch suddenly seemed cheerful and homelike: a miraculous contrast with the dark timber rising above on all sides, where the wild animals, bear and bobcats and elk and wolves, probably sniffed in astonishment.
Harry made a big batch of flap-jacks and a pot of coffee; Shep curled in a corner and snuggled for comfortable sleep; the air outside was chill, but within was warm, and a candle that Archie produced gave light enough to eat by.
Archie was awarded the bunk, for a good rest. Harry and Terry spread their beds on the floor. They were used to sleeping on the ground, but Terry found it hard to go to sleep. He wanted to talk—he fairly itched to be out with spade and pan, digging gold from "their" mine. Think of it! A mine, a genuine gold mine, at last! Now they could pay his father back easy, and also show him and George how to get rich.
"I know how you feel," said Archie, from the bunk. "They say that when Gregory discovered his lode after tracing it for miles, and found four dollars in his first pan, he kept his partner awake till three o'clock in the morning, talking, and he was still talking at breakfast time."
"Wonder how he discovered it," hazarded Terry.
"He just started in on lower Clear Creek, at the Platte, and kept panning, and panning, on up, until above this gulch the gold quit. Then he turned into this gulch, because it seemed to yield the most color, and the gold was the coarsest, and he kept panning and panning until the color quit again. Then he knew he'd come to the place where the gold below was washed from. So he went back to the Platte and got a partner; and they sized up the natural lay of the gulch, at the highest spot where the color had quit—and they struck rich diggin's with the very first spadeful. That was the sixth of May. After they'd located a lot of ground for themselves and their friends the news got out, and now look at the mob!"
"Well, I'll bet we've got something just as good," declared Terry, confidently.
Immediately after a hurried breakfast they started in to pan their own claim, under the direction of Archie.
"I've always found the most gold in that spot there," he instructed. "There was another spot, where I panned first, but it's quit on me. Expect, though, you'll find a lot of 'em. Let's dig and try out some of the dirt in our pans."
Into the spot Terry plunged the spade. The dirt was gravelly and soft—two strokes of the blade were more than enough to loosen sufficient for the three pans. The pans were sheet-iron and about the size and shape of a large milk-pan. In a moment they three were trailing down to the little creek, each with some two inches of the dirt in the bottom of his pan. They squatted to fill the pans with water, and carefully twirled to slop it out again along with the dirt that ought to float off.
This was an anxious process. Archie finished first, because he was in practice.
"I didn't get anything this time," he announced, gaily. "But I don't care. I'm going out."
Terry's dirt had practically all flowed off. He picked out the bits of gravel—they were only pebbles and flakes of rock. He peered for yellow—yes, there it was! A glint mingled with a seam of coarse sand.
"I've got some!" he yelled. "See here? I've got some!"
Archie looked in.
"That's right. Let me finish it for you. I'll flirt that sand out."
So he did, with a dexterous twirl that sent part of the sand out and the rest against the sides, and left the heavier yellow in the middle.
"Reckon I've landed a little, myself," remarked Harry.
He had! Perhaps a trifle more than Terry, and the two pans together weren't enough to cover the point of the knife-blade with which they scraped the yellow up and carefully deposited it in Father Richards' old buckskin bag, brought for the purpose.
"Gold's worth $21 an ounce and that's about a pennyweight, I guess," encouraged Archie. "Ninety cents—but it's a beginning. Of course, where you dug I'd been digging before. You'll find a better place. You see, I've already taken out $80. So go ahead and keep panning, and I'll travel."
Archie had arranged to leave with a wagon outfit who were disgusted because they'd discovered nothing. The two new proprietors of the Golden Prize stopped operations long enough to bid him good-bye, and watch him trudge away, his pack on his back.
"When you want some of your gold, come back or let us know," called Harry, after.
"It's all yours," he retorted. "That's why I bought the mine."
"Jiminy!" exclaimed Terry. "That's big pay for what little we did—just giving him a drink of water and toting him in a cart."
The next few pans didn't yield anything at all; then Harry made a "strike," as he called it, and scraped out as much yellow as would cover a finger-nail. He'd got the dirt from a new spot, "for luck," and from the same spot Terry managed to extract about as much.
"We'll have to try about," counseled Harry, "until we find spots like those of Archie's. We've got a lot of space yet."
As Archie had said, this digging and panning was hard work. At every stroke the spades clinked against rock—a boulder or a ledge—and to chip away with a pick was about as bad. And then, to trudge back and forth with the pans! But Harry hit upon the idea of dumping the dirt upon a piece of gunny sacking and thus carrying several spadesful at a time, to be panned.
They scarcely stopped for dinner, and by evening had greatly widened the trench. When they knocked off for supper and sleep the buckskin sack was apparently as flat and as light as in the early morning, and they were mud from soles to waist. But nevertheless, the sack contained gold! Peeking in, one might see it!
"We'll have to get a pair of scales," proclaimed Harry. "And we'll have to go about this more scientifically. Panning's too slow."
"How much did we find, do you think?" invited Terry.
"Five dollars' worth, maybe—and we're hungry enough to eat five dollars' worth of grub. But that's all right. We're just starting in, and we own all the ground from the cabin to that little creek, and from half-way up the hill down to the bottom. Hooray!" He grabbed Terry and they war-danced, while Shep barked gladly.
"I'd rather dig gold than potatoes, wouldn't you, now?" demanded Terry. "We're liable to make a hundred dollars 'most any day. We haven't done much more than scratch."
"What do you want for supper?" asked Harry. "Let's celebrate with antelope steak and apple pie."
"Sure!" cheered Terry. "We don't have to save on grub."
They were sitting down, on the stool and the edge of the bunk, to a sumptuous supper, when a step and a grunting sounded outside, Shep growled, and into the half-open doorway was thrust an inquiring face. It was the red face of Pat Casey.
"Good evenin' to yez," he proffered, blinking.
"Come in, come in. Glad to see you. Sit and have a bite." And Harry changed from the stool to the bunk-edge beside Terry.
Pat, muddy like everybody else, clumped in, agrin.
"Sure, Oi've had my supper, but Oi'll set a bit," he answered. "Oi've been a-lookin' for yez. An' are yez at home already?"
"Yes, sir-ee," pronounced Harry, triumphantly. "Here we are."
"An' have yez located? 'Tis the sick boy's property, ain't it? Oi saw him goin' out this mornin'."
"All ours now, till he comes back again; cabin, claim, everything."
"And we're to have all we find," added Terry. "We've panned over five dollars already and we're only learning. He took out $80, but there's the whole claim left yet: tons of it! We're going to put in a sluice and do a lot other improving and fix things up right."
"B' gorry, mebbe yez have a bonanzy," congratulated Pat. "Gold is where yez find it. Oi've washed out a matter o' wan dollar an' sixty-siven cints meself, but didn't Oi tell yez we'd all be rich together, some o' these days?" He sniffed and gazed over the table. "Faith, is that a pie? A genuyine pie?"
"That's what. Have a piece, Pat?"
"'Tis wan thing Oi can't refuse," admitted Pat, modestly. "'Specially apple pie."
Harry cut him a generous piece, and having dissected it with his knife into large mouthfuls, he accepted the invitation to finish the half; Harry and Terry ate the other half.
"Ye made it?" he inquired, of Harry. "Glory be! Sure, now, Oi wish ye were in the business. Couldn't ye make me a pie, occasional? Oi'll pay ye two dollars apiece annytime."
"Can't promise that yet, Pat," laughed Harry. "But whenever we have a pie you're welcome to help us eat it."
"Not me," protested Pat. "A rale apple pie is worth two dollars of anny man's money; an' if that ain't enough Oi'll pay ye more."
But of course pie was a small item in comparison with a gold mine that might yield $100 a day, under proper management. However, Pat lighted his short black pipe and spent the evening, and they all talked gold, gold, gold.
"I think," said Harry, after Pat had left, with much good-will and another reference to pie, and the two partners prepared for bed, "that tomorrow we'll make a tour around the camp, to see what other folks are doing, and then we'll know how to go about it the quickest way. Panning is too slow forus."
When after breakfast they started out, "for (as Harry said) the latest wrinkles in getting rich quick," the gulch was already astir and at work. And a busy, inspiring sight it was, alive from side to side and apparently from end to end with cabins, completed or begun, some plank-roofed, some roofed with pine boughs; with dug-outs, tents, wagons, oxen, mules, and with men digging, burrowing, toiling at spade and pick, squatting over gold-pans, or manipulating the boxes set on rockers, while the few women were attending to dishes or hanging out the family washing.
"Washing $3 a dozen," announced a sign in front of one tent.
The gulch was long and broken, and of course not half the sights were to be seen from any one point.
"Let's walk up a piece, first," suggested Harry.
So they did, in confident manner. Only day before yesterday they had come in as tenderfeet—not knowing a thing and not owning a foot of ground. Now they were regular residents, actual miners, with a paying claim and a cabin, and might hold up their heads. The very dirt on their clothes proclaimed their rank. Terry felt like a wealthy citizen.
The man who evidently owned the claim next above theirs paused to greet them. He was another young man, with a blond beard, and a smile that disclosed white even teeth, and although he was roughly dressed in ragged red flannel shirt, belted trousers and heavy cow-hide boots, his chest, showing under his shirt, which was open at the throat, was very white, and now as he rested his foot upon his spade and shoved back his slouch hat, his forehead also was very white.
"How are you, neighbors?" he accosted. "Made your pile yet?"
"No, sir," promptly responded Harry. "But it's right there waiting for us. All we've done is a little panning, and with proper development work we've got a bonanza."
"We sure have," supported Terry. "We panned out five dollars in color, first thing. But that's too slow."
The man smiled good-humoredly.
"You're in luck, then." He wiped his brow. "I haven't seen my color yet, but I suppose it's around in here somewhere. Anyway, I'm getting plenty of exercise. We're all crazy together. I expect I'm as crazy as the rest. You know what Virgil says—facilis decensus Averni, eh?" and he eyed Harry inquiringly. "Did you find that so?"
"'Easy is the descent to Avernus,' eh?" translated Harry. "Hum! Well, we did come down in here at a good gait. How we'll get out again is a question. But you must be a college man."
"Yes, and also a preacher. 'Whom the gods destroy they first make mad' is another favorite reflection of mine, among these diggin's. Are you a college man, too?"
"Yes; University of Virginia."
"I'm Yale. Glad to meet you. Well, it's a great place—all kinds of us jumbled and digging and sweating, talking gold and eating gold and dreaming gold, when most of us could accomplish more and make more where we came from."
"I reckon the thing we don't know how to do always looks easier than the thing we do know how to do," reasoned Harry.
"Exactly. But where are you bound for?"
"We're going to put in improvements," spoke Terry. "Do you know where we can get a sluice?"
"Make it, if you can buy the lumber. But you'll have to stand in line and grab the boards as fast as they fall from the saw. By the way, you don't object to my using that water, do you? I'm not certain whether it's on your land or mine; it's pretty nearly between, as I figure."
"We thought it was on our side, but use all you want, certainly," replied Harry.
They left the preacher to his digging and proceeded.
The farther they went up the gulch, the more intense seemed the fever for work, and the thicker the camps and people. Yes, and there was gold, too! Three men were operating a "rocker." This was one of those wooden boxes on rockers like a cradle; one man shoveled in dirt, another poured in water, a third rocked the box from side to side, and the water and dirt flowed out through a slot at the lower end.
The Golden Prize proprietors halted to watch. When the water and dirt had escaped, in the bottom of the box were to be seen several cleats nailed across, and caught against these cleats was gold! The men figured that there was eight dollars' worth right there!
Up here were a few sluices, too: the long troughs, also with cleats nailed across the bottom inside, to catch the gold as the water and dirt flowed over. Into some of the sluices water had to be poured by hand, but others led from streams and the water flowed through without having been dipped. The shorter sluices were called "Long Toms."
"That's what we want," decided Harry. "A regular sluice, running right across our claim."
"There's the wheel-barrow man!" exclaimed Terry.
And so it was, standing in front of a tent which bore the sign, "W. N. Byers. The Rocky Mountain News," and nearby was a stake and a sign: "Central City."
They shook hands with the wheel-barrow man.
"What's this?" demanded Harry. "A town?"
"Yes, sir! Mr. Byers has named it. It's the best location. Right in the middle of the Gulch."
"Is he going to stay here?"
"Nope; but he's pushing things along. What's happened to you boys? You look as if you'd been prospecting."
"We have," laughed Harry. "Haven't you?"
"Yes, a little." And he suddenly called: "Hello, John. What's the matter down there?"
"They've got wind of another strike," answered the man, striding on. He was a black-bearded man, and seemed very busy.
"That's John Gregory himself," explained the wheel-barrow man. "The original boomer of this gulch. But watch the people pile out, will you!"
"Yes; there's a big strike south of here, I understand," from the doorway of his tent spoke Mr. Byers himself: a stocky, pleasant-faced man, with a close-trimmed brown beard. The diggin's had as great a variety of beards and whiskers as it had of people.
So he was the pioneer newspaper man, was he—the man who had brought a printing-press, and a stock of paper already printed on one side at Omaha, clear from the Missouri River to Cherry Creek. But Terry was given scant opportunity to stare. Harry clutched him by the sleeve:
"Come on, quick! I've got an idea."
Away they hastened, back down the gulch. Before, at the lower end, the confusion was increasing. Outfits were hurrying away—drivers swinging their lashes, men footing fast; camps were breaking, and on their claims miners and prospectors were shouldering pick and spade and pack and hastening after the procession now crossing the creek.
The movement spread up the gulch, communicated from camp to camp and claim to claim.
"What'll we do? Get more land?" puffed Terry.
"No, no."
But the lower end of the gulch was not by any means deserted, as they arrived. It was mainly the frothy overflow that had bubbled out, and when the eddy had settled there appeared to be almost as many people as before. Even the claims which had been abandoned were being quickly re-occupied. However, Harry dashed to one man who had packed up and on his cabin was tacking a sign: "Keep Off!" while his partner waited.
"Going to leave?"
"Mebbe so. Want to buy this claim? She's a humdinger."
"No. But I'll buy your sluice. How'll you sell it?"
"That sluice? Seventy-five dollars."
"Whew!"
"It's forty feet long, of three boards; that means 120 feet, and lumber's $300 a thousand feet and you have to put in your order a week ahead. With the props and the cleats and the nails there's over $40 of material in that sluice, and I reckon the labor of hauling and building is wuth the balance."
"I'll give you $50," snapped Harry.
"Sold. But hurry up. We can't wait long here to sell a sluice. There's too much doing 'round the corner."
Harry fished out three gold pieces—two twenties and a ten—and passed them over.
"Better take it off this property quick or somebody else will," advised the man; and away he and his partner strode, for the strike in Bobtail Gulch just across a little divide south.
"Lucky again!" jubilated Harry—who, Terry saw, had been smart. "Cost a lot of money, but we couldn't have made it much cheaper ourselves and we'd have been held up waiting for boards. You sit on it while I go for Jenny. We haul the whole thing at once."
"Maybe we could have got it for nothing, after they'd left," proposed Terry, with an eye to the general grab-all as various persons swarmed over the abandoned claims.
"It wasn't ours, was it?" retorted Harry. "But it is now." And he left at a fast limp.
He returned with Jenny, harnessed, and they triumphantly dragged away the sluice, carrying also the scissors props on which it had rested. Its joints indeed threatened to part, but by picking their path they arrived with it intact at the Golden Prize.
Their preacher neighbor greeted them with a wave of hand and came over to inspect.
"Looks as though you were going right into business," he asserted. "I thought maybe you'd join the rush for Bobtail."
"No, sir; we stick," assured Harry. "A bird in the hand's worth two in the bush."
"Well, depends on the bird," answered the preacher. "Now, my bird's an old crow, I'm afraid, and if I could see a fat turkey in the bush I'd drop my crow pretty quick, like those other fellows."
After dinner Harry rather ruefully examined his money belt. It was flat and limp.
"Ten dollars left," he said.
"And our dust, you know," reminded Terry. "We've the five dollars we washed out, and we can wash out more whenever we want it."
Harry brightened.
"That's right. We're rich. You can try panning again, this afternoon, and I'll go down to the grocery and lay in provisions and any other stuff we'll need, and then we can set up the sluice and pile up the gold. Get to have everything running before Father Richards and that George Stanton come in."
"We can buy a claim for them, too," proposed Terry. "Or find one that's been left."
"No crows," corrected Harry. "Turkeys only."
Terry went at his panning with enthusiasm, bound to make a showing. Panning was slow, but it was rather exciting because there always was liable to be something yellow right under your eye, if you looked close enough. Panning was a one-man job; you did it all yourself.
The preacher strolled over to watch.
"How's the dirt paying now?" he queried.
"Pretty good. I've foundsomemore," truthfully answered Terry. "About a dollar's worth, I guess."
"A pinch, eh? How'd you like to take over my claim?"
"Haven't any money yet. I mean, we won't have money till we get the sluice to going."
"I'll tell you what I'll do," proffered the preacher. "Just to make the transaction binding, I'll sell you the claim for your next pan. Preaching is my business, not mining, you see. If you buy my claim, then nobody can accuse you of jumping it."
"All right," accepted Terry.
"Play fair, now," laughed the professor. "Take your dirt from a good rich spot."
Spots looked mainly all alike to Terry. The hole where he had been digging was laying bare the hard rock, but he scraped up a quantity of dirt and loose splinters from a crevice——
"You're giving me principally rock, aren't you?" criticized the preacher, good-naturedly. "But let it go. I'll be game."
However, as the pan cleared and Terry threw aside the splinters, they both exclaimed. Yellow was plainly visible—and moreover there was a blackish, cindery fragment the size of a crushed hazel-nut that glinted and weighed suspiciously as Terry lingered in the act of tossing it away also.
"Here! Hold on!" And the preacher took it. "Nugget, isn't it? Fifteen or twenty dollars, I'll wager—and ten dollars more in flakes!"
"That's a rich pan, boys, as I reckon," interrupted a voice, accompanied by crunching footsteps and a growl from Shep.
The speaker was a miner over six feet tall and broad in proportion—a veritable giant of a man, in clothes as rough as the roughest, and with a revolver at his belt. In his black-whiskered face his eyes were small and deep-set, and close together, or as close as an enormous nose would permit. He was carrying a sack on his shoulder, which he deposited in order to investigate the pan.
"Yes, sir-ee. A $40 pan, countin' the nugget. Does all your dirt run like that?"
"No, sir; not yet," replied Terry. "But maybe it will when we sluice it."
"Goin' to sluice, are you?" The giant's close-set little eyes roved about inquisitively. "This your claim, is it?"
"Yes, sir. This and the next one."
"Where'd you get that lucky pan o' dirt?"
"From that hole."
The giant strode up, carelessly poked about in the hole with his boot-toe, filtered some of the dirt through his fingers.
"You're down to bed-rock already," he pronounced, returning. "I calkilate you may have struck a leetle pocket, but I don't count much on these shallow slopes. Some gold ketches, most of it's washed down. He your partner?" and he indicated the preacher.
"No, sir. My partner's down to the store."
"Older'n you?"
"Some."
"Waal," and the giant picked up his sack, "you'll have most of your work for nothin'. May strike an occasional pocket, an' may not. You've got one o' them pore locations. Mostly rock." With that he stumped on into the little draw down which flowed the side rivulet. Once he paused, to cast a glance behind at the stream and the waiting sluice; and then he disappeared around a shoulder up the draw.
"We're no better off forhisopinion," quoth the preacher. "Don't believe he's quite the style of a man I'd cater to, anyway. But our bargain holds, does it? I'll make you out a bill of sale."
"Sure," manfully assented Terry, trying not to regret that this was the one big pan.
Harry presently arrived, laden with purchases.
"Meat's fifty cents a pound," he panted. "We may have to eat Shep or Jenny. Flour's snapped up at $15 a sack, and milk's fifty cents a quart from the cows of some of the emigrants. Whew! Couldn't find any gold-scales; we'll do our weighing at the grocery store till the express office or post office is opened. Everything's payable in dust. But I invested in a treat for us; see?" and he produced a can of oysters! "That's our bank. The groceryman says oyster-cans are the popular things for holding gold, in the diggin's. It cost two dollars, but it'll be worth a heap more than that when it's full. I'm nearly strapped, though. Have you added much to our pile?"
"Added the preacher's claim," blurted Terry, and 'fessed up. "It was a big pan, too," he concluded. "I've found only a little color since."
"Color helps," encouraged Harry. "That will be a claim for George. Good! We can work both with the same water."
The preacher brought the bill of sale of the "True Blue" claim, as he had named it; and that evening they had him in to join them in making merry over the can of oysters. Harry thoroughly washed out the emptied can and set it aside to dry, for the "bank."
The "improvements" on the True Blue claim consisted of merely a few holes and a lean-to of pine boughs covered with a piece of ragged canvas. The preacher jovially carried away his personal belongings on his back; he was, as he expressed it, "traveling light."
Left in possession of both claims, the two partners decided to fill their oyster-can from the Golden Prize first, and they jumped into the work of setting up the sluice.
This proved to be a bigger job than it had appeared before being tackled. The sluice was heavy and had to be moved about by sections; and to place it conveniently and yet give it the proper slant, the ground had to be leveled or mounded or lowered; and a little dam had to be made, with a race or ditch to supply the water to the upper end of the sluice: and what with disconnecting, and shifting hither-thither, and re-connecting, and all that, two days were consumed.
There had been no time for panning, but now, at last, they might start in washing by wholesale, so to speak.
They lugged the dirt on gunny sacking to the sluice, dumped the dirt into the running water, and while Harry stirred it Terry followed down along the sluice to throw out the rocks and clear the riffles or cross cleats. A back-breaking and also muddy job this sluicing was, for the sackings of dirt were heavy and the sluice of course leaked at the seams and joints, so that the ground underneath was speedily soaked and made slippery by the constant trudging.
By noon the riffles were filled with gravelly mud, and Harry decided that they should be cleaned. So the water was turned off.
Now for the test!
"I see yellow! I see yellow!" asserted Terry, running from cleat to cleat, and eyeing the deposits against each; and indeed it did seem to him that the little dikes glistened roguishly.
"You see more than I do, then," retorted Harry, rubbing his long nose. "What I see is more panning, after all, to sort that stuff."
They dug the lodged stuff out with their knives, and panned several cleatsful at a time. Harry found a nugget (small one); little by little the gold left in the pans increased (hurrah!), until, at the wind-up——
"How much, do you think?" demanded Terry, excitedly.
"Mighty near an ounce, and the nugget besides; say $40." Harry's dirty face was abeam. "And we've washed as much dirt in half a day as we could pan by hand in a week. At this rate we'll soon have both claims skinned to the rock, and'll need others. But I reckon we can find 'em, or buy 'em."
"Looks as though we were going to be powerful rich, doesn't it?" said Terry, awed by the very thought. "We'll fill our oyster can."
"Shucks!" remarked Harry. "I saw one sluice where they'd cleaned up $138 in a day—but there were four men working it, and they had more loose dirt than we've got. Our dirt's mostly rock. Anyway, we'll lay aside that $100 we owe Father Richards and have something to show extra before he and mother and the Stantons come in."
However, the afternoon clean-up netted them, although they had dug the dirt from a deeper place which looked very promising, scarcely color! And when early, before breakfast, in the morning, Terry sallied out to survey about and plan for a big day, to his astonishment the rivulet was dry, except for a dribble!
He hastened back to the cabin with his eyes popping.
"Our water's gone!"
"What!"
"It is. There's not enough to fill a tin cup!"
"Great Scotland!" And setting aside the skillet and dropping his fork, Harry rushed out to see for himself.
"Wonder if the blamed thing's drying up," he hazarded. "Well, we've got a pailful for drinking and cooking, anyway. And after breakfast we'll try to find out what's happened."
They had not yet explored the little draw down which the water drained; it was shallow and uninteresting; but they did not need to go far to find out "what had happened." Around the shoulder of the first bend they arrived at a branch draw on the other side of their low hill, and were in the midst of some more claims.
Water from a spring had been feeding the little draw and the branch draw both; but now a sluice had been set up, taking away so much that there was none left for the little draw.
Several men were at work with the sluice. They paid no attention to their visitors until Harry interrupted the nearest.
"Look here. You men have taken our water."
The man turned around short. He was the giant who had commented on Terry's big pan and on the condition in general of the Golden Prize prospect.
"What you talkin' about?" he growled. "Who are you an' where you come from? Oh, it's you, is it?" he added, to Terry—and Terry had the notion that he had known perfectly well who they were and where they were from, before speaking.
"Yes," answered Terry. "And this is my partner. You aren't leaving us any water for our own sluice."
"You have all that comes, haven't you?"
"We haven't all that ought to come, though," answered Harry, a bit sharply because the giant's tone was decidedly rough. "You've dug the ditch to your sluice higher up than necessary, and it lowers the level of the spring so much that no water enters our gulch at all. The stream used to split, didn't it?"
"Split nothin'. Trouble is, your gulch is runnin' dry. You ought to've figgered on that, now that the snow's all melted off and sunk in. Most of those little gulches dry up, come toward summer."
"The stream used to split, and feed through this gulch, just the same," insisted Harry. "You can see the channel. I hold that we're entitled to a share of this spring. And if you'd move your ditch a foot or two we'd get enough, and you'd have plenty yourselves."
"You're entitled to just what drains into your gulch, an' we're entitled to what drains into ours," growled the giant. "This water's in our gulch, ain't it—spring and all?"
"I don't know that it is, by rights," retorted Harry. "The spring's pretty close to being at the dividing point. And anyway, we're not asking you for your water; we're asking for ours."
"Now look-ee here," and the giant tapped his revolver butt: "By miners' law we're entitled to a share o' what water comes down our gulch, an' by miners' law you're entitled to a share o' what water comes down your gulch, alluz considerin' there's any to share. If your claim was wuth a picayune I'd advise you to hold on till next spring, when mebbe you'd get a leetle water again from natteral drainage; but as it ain't wuth a picayune I'd advise you to get off an' look elsewhar. Anyhow, you get off this ground mighty quick; for if you're huntin' trouble you'll find it in a bigger dose than you can handle."
"It looks to me like a deliberate scheme to run us off," began Harry, hotly. But he checked himself. "Come on, Terry," he bade.
"Did you see Pine Knot Ike?" exclaimed Terry, as they returned, with heads up, to their own ground. "I did—he was down below, with another man."
"Yes, I saw him." Back at their sluice again they stood undecided. Harry scratched his long nose and surveyed about. "Confound 'em! It's a dirty mean trick. If they'd change the head of their sluice ever so little we'd have enough water and so would they. But they've fixed it so that when they shut off to clean up the water all flows the other way. Let's see. We can get water for the cabin from that creek down below. Might pan with it, too—only we'd spend most of our time carrying the dirt down or the water up."
But when they went down to the creek, to investigate, they were curtly told by a camper there that his claim and others extended all along on both sides, and that they were entitled to the water themselves.
"You can help yourselves to drinking water, and that's all," he granted. "I'm sorry, strangers, but if you're on a dry prospect I reckon you'd better get out."
"Not yet!" retorted Harry. "Not," he added to Terry, "as long as we can makepie! Come on. We'll find Pat."
They had not seen Pat Casey for several days. As they descended the gulch, it seemed busier and more crowded than ever. Five thousand people were here now, according to report, and all the surrounding gulches were thronged, also. Sluices were running, others were being set up—and the thought of their own dry, useless sluice, and the gold thatmustbe waiting, and the way they had worked to prepare for getting it, made Terry half sick. His father would laugh, and George would be a pest. Yes, George would poke all manner of fun at them.
Pat wasn't where they had expected to find him.
"Pat Casey? The red-headed Irishman, you mean? He's across yonder, and he's struck it rich. You'll find him over there, strangers, washing out $50 and more a day."
So Pat had moved. He was waist deep in a trench that showed signs of soon being a tunnel; and when from the brink they hailed him, he clambered out. All mud and perspiration was Pat.
"B' gorry, Oi'm glad to see yez," said Pat. "Oi've been thinkin' o' yez, but what with gettin' rich Oi've no time for calls. Oi bought out the men who were gopherin' here, an' now the deeper Oi go the richer Oi am. Sure, yez are lookin' at a millionaire, 'most. An' how are things with you boys?"
They told him. Pat scratched his head.
"Too bad, too bad. An' a dirty trick. But, faith, there ain't water enough to go 'round, an' that's a fact; not sayin', though, that they're actin' square, at all. For they ain't. Are yez in need?" He winked. "Jist come into me house a minute."
He led them into his bough hut, and from underneath his bunk fished out an oyster can.
"Heft it, wance," he invited.
It was heavy.
"Help yourselves, lads," he insisted.
But Harry laughed.
"Not yet, thanks, Pat. We've got a little to tide us along. What I want to know is, how's your appetite for pie?"
"Two dollars apiece for pie, an' two pies a day: wan for breakfast an' wan for supper; an' on Sunday wan for dinner besides," promptly answered Pat.
"It's a go," pronounced Harry.
"Will it take the both o' yez to make pie?" queried Pat. "Sure, ye look like a husky boy," he said, to Terry. "Let your partner make the pies, an' ye turn your hand to helpin' me at the sluice. Oi need another good worker. Oi fired the wan Oi had only this very mornin' because he sat down too frequent. Oi'll give ye a dollar an' a half a day, an' ye can fetch down me pies."
"That's a bargain," accepted Terry. "Wait till I get my spade."
When he and Harry arrived again at their own property they found the giant there. He was standing in their hole, and inquisitively poking about.
"Here! What are you doing?" challenged Harry.
"No harm meant," apologized the giant. "But you're down to bed-rock an' that's a fact. Still, a man might wash out a little dust, from spots, I reckon, if he had the water. Now, the truth is we're sorry for you boys. You've put consider'ble time an' labor in on this prospect, an' we're willin' to do the right thing. How'll you sell?"
"For how much?" demanded Harry.
"The property's no good to you; never would amount to anything great anyhow; it's too rocky. But I'll tell you what we'll do: We'll give you $100 for your claim, to save hard feelin's, an' we'll take the chance o' pannin' out enough when there's water, to pay us back. I expec' we'll lose, but we'd rather lose than have the hard feelin's. You get the hundred dollars an' the experience."
"We'll keep the experience and the claim, too; eh, Terry?" Harry answered. "And there's something you men can keep: you can keepoff. What's that in your hand? A piece of our rock? Drop it!"